… as Fashola absolves self
Who padded the 2017 budget of the Ministry of Works, Power and Housing with over N2 billion? This is the puzzle members of the Senate Committee on Lands, Housing and Urban Development are trying to unravel.
This comes barely 24 hours after a coalition of non-governmental organisations pointed out that N151.5 billion can be saved in this year’s budget if frivolous and wasteful line items are expunged.
At the 2017 budget defence Tuesday, minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola shocked the committee when he disowned the sum of N2 billion voted for Regional Housing Scheme in the budget. The Housing sector has a proposal of N64.991 billion in this year’s budget.
In his defence, Fashola told the committee that the Ministry of Finance allocated the amount in the 2017 budgetary profile of the Ministry of Housing.
When queried by the committee chairman, Barnabas Gemade on the justification of the project, Fashola said: “I don’t know because it is not our initiative.”
Consequently, Gemade ordered the committee clerk to write the minister of finance, Kemi Adeosun, to appear before it for explanation on the vote.
Recall that the 2016 budget was engulfed in controversy of padding with minister of information, Lai Mohammed, his counterpart in health, Isaac Adewole, disowning their budget.
At a public hearing on the 2017 budget on Monday, a group of civil society organisations under the aegis of Citizens Wealth Platform revealed that N151.5 billion could be saved in this year’s budget if frivolous and wasteful line items are expunged from the national budget.
Lead Director, Centre for Social Justice, Eze Onyekpere, who compiled the items, indicted a total of 64 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) for what he called ‘inappropriate, unclear line items’ totalling N151.536billion
The report also recommended a serious reduction in the budget of the National Assembly stating that “the total vote of N115 billion for the National Assembly in the 2017 budget could be reduced to N110 billion in the spirit of the austere times and to demonstrate solidarity with the Nigerian people who are suffering and going through untold hardship”
Some of the line items and the wasteful expenditure, according to Onyekpere include: budget expenses and administration N18,240,194, which he said is already covered in the personnel vote of the State House. He also queried the purchase of kitchen equipment for State House Headquarters at N100,820,300. He wondered why the same line item is repeated in less than 12 months when N80,255,070 was appropriated for it in the 2016 budget.
Onyekpere submitted that N77,545,700 budgeted as Residential Rent is uncalled for, adding that the ‘landlord’ of the State House ought to have been disclosed.
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